Maryse Meijer: Heartbreaker: Stories

You’re pretty, Frog says.

Thank you, Natalie says, and her smile is genuine. She goes down on her knees and looks him in the eye, close enough to see the dandruff in his hair, the baby fuzz clustered around his lips.

What do you think? she asks, opening his knees a little so she can slip between them. You want to see more? She puts his hand to her breast, squeezing her fingers over his. His body goes rigid.

It’s okay, she croons. Here, look. She starts to unhook her bra and then slips the straps over her shoulders, slow, before letting it fall to the floor.

See? she says, reaching out to touch him, but he flinches and turns his head.

I said it’s o kay , she says, grabbing for his hand, trying to pull him back to her, but he screeches, like a cat or a bird, and she lets go.

I go home, I go home! he cries, cowering, a bubble of snot hanging from his nose.

Get out, then, you fucking idiot, she hisses, throwing her jacket at his head. His nose keeps running and he doesn’t wipe it. Get out, she says again, and he scrambles to the door. She follows him, mostly naked, her hair swinging in her face.

You forgot your board, dumbass! she yells, and he stops and looks at her, his eyes glittering in the dark, his red mouth distorted by fear and stupidity, still smiling.

* * *

Natalie brushes her hair until it crackles. Her mascara has dried up; she plunges the wand in and out of the tube, then throws it against the wall. Cheap shit, she says to herself, and puts on more eyeliner.

She goes to Melissa’s. It’s Thursday and there are twenty people there, maybe more. She gets sucked into a kitchen full of boys. The table is covered in beer bottles, ashtrays, exploding bags of chips; someone’s brother just turned twenty-one and there is a sheet cake that people are eating with their fingers.

Hey Felicia, one guy says as she walks to the table, grabbing a handful of Doritos.

I’m not Felicia, she says.

Oh, he says. No one gets up for her to sit down so she just leans against the stove while they talk. She gets bored hearing about TV, movies, other girls. Everyone is talking at the same time. For a while it’s like she’s turned into a zombie, not really thinking anything, her body numb. She lets her eyes go out of focus so that everything blurs together and for a moment she thinks she knows what it’s like to just not exist. Then someone bumps into her arm and she snaps out of it.

Do you have a cigarette? she asks no one in particular. A boy fumbles in his pocket, shaking his head.

You have to start bringing your own shit, he says, and Natalie rolls her eyes, taking the cigarette he offers.

You know that retard at school? Frog? she says, taking a drag. Her shirt rides up over her hip, exposing a strip of skin and bone.

Oh man, someone says, slapping his jeans. That guy’s fucking hilarious.

They all take turns imitating Frog’s expression, the way he talks, his loose-armed way of walking, until they’re hysterical with laughter.

Well, she cuts in, blowing cigarette smoke to the ceiling. I fucked him.

Everyone stops talking.

Damn, one guy says, leaning back in his chair.

Serious? another guy asks.

Yeah, she says.

What’s his dick like?

Like a dick , idiot. He’s retarded, not deformed.

The table is quiet for a moment; then she winks, and they grin and laugh and get more drinks and drink them and she goes into the backyard with someone: but right before it happens she pulls her arm from his grip and says No, I don’t want to, and the boy is slapping at her clothes but she slaps right back until he is off her, cursing. Melissa calls to her from the porch, but Natalie shakes her head and walks fast, her arms around her waist; when she is home she sits down hard on her bed, swallowing, pressing her palms to her eyes until it hurts.

* * *

Frog, she says on the phone, into his answering machine. It’s me.

What do you want? Mrs. Hoff says, picking up the phone, and the girl is too startled for a moment to say anything.

What? Mrs. Hoff repeats.

I want to talk to Frog, the girl says. Where is he?

At a friend’s.

A friend’s ? Natalie says. She is lashed by jealousy, rage. She clenches the phone until her knuckles go white.

He can’t talk to you, Mrs. Hoff says, and hangs up.

* * *

It’s almost noon by the time she gets to school. She doesn’t have her books or her backpack; her hair is uncombed, her top from the night before wrinkled and stained under the arms. As she cuts through the main building, she sees that someone has written on her locker in black marker Natalie Harper fucks retards.

She punches through the heavy double doors and strides toward the special ed bungalow at the back of the field. Soon the bell will ring for lunch and there will be students everywhere, streaming across the hot grass. But for now it’s just Natalie, and the bungalow, and Frog’s face through the window, turned toward a piece of paper on his desk.

Chris! she shouts, slapping an open palm against the glass. Chris!

He lifts his head, looking first in the wrong direction, then catching her eye. She’s hitting the thick glass so hard she can feel it vibrating in her elbow, her shoulder; she must look crazy, she thinks, with her bad hair and ugly clothes, her fist coming down again and again, but he just smiles, a smile so wide it swallows her, it breaks her heart.

The garage belongs to my father. We — three half brothers, not a single mother in common — work for cash stuffed in envelopes and pinned to a board next to the refrigerator. I am the shortest of my siblings by far, my head not even hoping to graze their chins. When they want to describe how small something is — a mini-fridge, an enemy’s penis — they say it is Robert-size. Among us brothers there are meth addictions, adult acne, and missing teeth, but my height is the crown jewel of our misfortunes, so constantly, awfully funny that my brothers have to choke back laughter every time they see me, even though they see me almost every day, even though, at 5'1", I am technically not a midget but merely below average. A distinction lost on them. On everyone.

* * *

Where I live is what they call a “garden” apartment; it sits mostly belowground, damp, low-ceilinged. Perfect for you! the landlord bellowed when he showed it to me, and it is perfect — not because of the ceilings, but because of the single dim window above my bed. Through it I see STILETTO. I also see dog paws — dog shit — bicycle tires — sneakers — rubber — pure sidewalk. My window grows filthy with cigarette ash and piss. Trash caresses the glass, twitching in between the bars of the iron grate, a sensual shudder mirroring my own as I wait for STILETTO to walk by. Her passing lasts a miraculous three seconds, slow enough for me to see what I want to see, fast enough to keep me hoping for more: skin, muscle, tendon, bone, the briefest flash of a blister above the patent lip of her high high heel.

After I see STILETTO I do this to myself: my foot up on the back of the sink, the razor skimming down and down, down and in. The blood goes in fat lines to the drain, some to the floor. The whole time I’m cutting I’m also saying Fuckfuckfuck : then I drop the blade, rinse my fingers, and turn on the water. I wrap a white towel over my ankle and knot it tight.

I wish I could explain this to you, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. I’ve tried all the short man’s voodoo: lifts in my shoes — stretching — vitamins — diets. My brothers just laughed harder. And now I think, there’s already so little of me, what’s a little less? Pain is not the point, though it tags along.